"Richmond--Richmond Blake--" and her voice broke. She threw herself forward upon Sabrina's shoulder and clasped her with shaking hands. "He has given me up, Sabrina," she moaned, between her sobs. "It is over. He has given me up." Sabrina led her to the great chair by the window, and forced her into it. Then she knelt beside her and drew the girl's head again to her shoulder. She patted her cheek with little regular beats that had a rhythmic soothing. "There, there, dear," she kept saying. "There, there!" Presently Clelia choked down her sobs, and raised her face, tempestuous in its marks of grief. "I'd just as soon tell you," she said, with a broken hardness, a composure struggled for and then lost. "I'd just as soon anybody would know it. I don't feel as if I'd any use for myself, now he don't prize me. Well, Sabrina, he don't want me any more." "You sure, dear?" asked Sabrina. "You better be sure." "We got talking about the land," said Clelia, in a high voice. "The ten-acre lot?" "Yes. I said to him: 'There's that man from New York. He's offered you two hundred dollars for it. Why don't you take it?'" "What's the man from New York want it for?" asked Sabrina, with what seemed a trifling irrelevance. Clelia answered impatiently. "I don't know. To build a summer cottage, I suppose. That's what Richmond asked me, and I said I didn't know. Then he said he wasn't going to sell till he knew what he was selling for." "Well, I call that kinder long-headed, myself," said Sabrina. "So you might; but the New York man went away that afternoon. 'Well,' says he, before he went, 'that's my offer. Take it or leave it.'" "But that's nothing to be mad about." "We didn't stop there. I reminded Rich how far that money would go towards building, and his jaw got set, and he said he couldn't help it. Then I told him I'd be switched if ever I lived with his folks--" "Oh, dear, dear!" lamented Sabrina. "You didn't say that, did you? Now you mustn't, dear. You mustn't say things folks can't forget." A gush of tears flooded the girl's cheeks. "Oh, I didn't mean to!" she cried, in the bitterness of remembering a battle lost. "He knew I didn't mean to. But I got sort of crazy, Sabrina. I did. And I told him at last--" Her eyelids dropped under their weight of tears. "What did you tell him?" "I told him he could choose between his folks and me." "What did he say?" "He said, 'I'll choose now. It's over.' He got up and walked out of the room. He turned at the door. 'It's over, Clelia,' says he. 'Don't you ever call me back, for I sha'n't come.' And he won't. He ain't that kind." "Oh, me! oh, me!" moaned Sabrina. She, too, knew he was not that kind. They sat in silence for a moment, the girl looking straight before her in a dull acquiescence, and Sabrina's pink face settled into aging lines. Suddenly the girl spoke sharply. "But I can't bear it, Sabrina, I can't bear it. It will kill me--if I don't kill myself."